Omaha.com | Tulsa World
Warren Buffett’s BH Media Group is buying the Tulsa World, Steve Jordon reports. The terms of the sale were not disclosed.
Tulsa’s Lorton family has owned the paper “for four generations,” Jordon writes. Buffett hasn’t bought a daily newspaper in nearly a month; his last purchase was the Greensboro News & Record at the end of January.
Jordon quotes World Publishing Co. chairman Robert E. Lorton Jr. as saying: “The newspaper business has become a difficult business model within a changing society and in particular for local family-owned newspapers. BH Media Group presents the best opportunity to continue a local paper that will serve this community, our friends and neighbors.”
The sale “assures a secure future for a local Tulsa World newspaper,” the World quotes Lorton as saying.
In a column about the Boston Globe last week, news-biz analyst Ken Doctor said to “expect an announcement of another Berkshire Hathaway newspaper acquisition — as soon as Monday.”
With the purchase of the World, Buffett owns 27 daily newspapers and 269 publications overall. He purchased all but one of Media General’s newspapers last May. He believes in properties that “intensively cover their communities.” The BH Media Group closed the Manassas (Va.) News & Messenger in December.
